| Date | Topic |
| WEEK 7 | The globalization of capitalism is giving rise to a "New Regionalism." Researchers have emphasized social, political, economic and cultural apects of this global "metropolitianization." China's rapid urbanization puts the problems of urban sustainability into sharp relief. |
| Feb. 20 | The new regionalism in global context (6meg ppt presentation); Economic restructuring and the internationalization of the Los Angeles region (ppt file) Global city-regions: trends, theory and policy (clusters ppt, 6 meg) |
| Feb. 22 |
"Metropolitanization" in global and comparative perspective China's rapid urbanization and its impact on world development China slide show, and movie clips of cars verses bicycles |
Assigned Readings
Porter, M. E. (2001). Regions and the new economics of competition. Global city-regions: trends, theory, policy. A. J. Scott. Cambridge, UK New York, Oxford University Press: 139-156. (ppt file)
Scott, A. J., J. Agnew, et al. (2001). Global City-Regions. Global city-regions: trends, theory, policy. A. J. Scott. Cambridge, UK New York, Oxford University Press: 11-29.
(jump to notes below)
Soja, E. W. (1987). Economic restructuring and the internationalization of the Los Angeles region. The Capitalist city: global restructuring and community politics. M. P. Smith and J. R. Feagin. New York, NY, B. Blackwell: 178-197. (jump to notes below)
Yin, Y. and M. Wang (2000). China's urban environmental sustainability in a global context. Consuming cities: the urban environment in the global economy after the Rio Declaration.N. Low, B. Gleeson, I. Elander and R. Lidskog. New York, Routledge: 153-172. (jump to notes below)
Topic introduction
In the world’s new competitive landscape city-regions have gained importance as territorial actors in their own right. This has been dubbed the “new regionalism.” The UN-Habitat report (State of the World's Cities 2004/2005) speaks of this in terms of "metropolitanization." City-regions are the locus of "untraded interdependencies"--a term economic geographers use to describe region-specific assets in production (i.e., social capital in the form of networks, conventions, informal rules, and habits). In terms of manufacturing, there has been a shift from Fordism to Global Fordism. This shift has spurred export led industrialization (ELI) in developing countries. The impact of global fordism registers in rust-belt cities of the U.S. (e.g., Detroit and Flint in Michigan) and sun-belt cities (e.g., Los Angeles and San Diego). City-regions are the middle ground tying together local and global forces; they are nodal points in globe-girdling networks of consumption, production, distribution and exchange. From a conceptual and practical standpoint, city-regions (as distinct from nation states) are important testing grounds for integrating the three Es of sustainable development: economic efficiency, equity, and environmental stewardship. China's rapid urbanization puts the problems of urban sustainability into sharp relief.
Scott, A. J., J. Agnew, et al. (2001). Global City-Regions. Global city-regions: trends, theory, policy. A. J. Scott. Cambridge, UK New York, Oxford University Press: 11-29.
Book
based on the Global City-Regions Conference in Los Angeles on October
21 - 23, 1999.
http://www.sppsr.ucla.edu/globalcityregions/Overview/intro.html
The UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, is hosting a Global
City-Regions conference. Below are a few passages from the on-line conference
theme paper, titled GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS (by Allen J. Scott, John Agnew,
Edward W. Soja, and Michael Storper)
"There are now more than 300 city-regions around the world with populations greater than one million. At least twenty city-regions have populations in excess of ten million. By the year 2025, the number of city-regions in each of these size classes will probably have doubled. These global city-regions present many deep challenges to researchers and policy makers as we enter the 21st century. The processes of world-wide economic integration and accelerated urban growth make traditional planning and policy strategies in these regions increasingly problematic while more fitting approaches remain in a largely experimental stage. New ways of thinking about these processes, and new ways of acting to harness their benefits and to control their negative effects are urgently needed. The idea of global city-regions can be traced back to the "world cities" of Hall (1966) and Friedmann and Wolff (1982), and to the "global cities" of Sassen (1991). We build here on these pioneering efforts, but in a way that tries to extend the meaning of the idea so as to stress yet further the importance of city-regions as fundamental spatial units of the global economy and as political actors on the world stage. So far from being dissolved away as geographic objects by processes of globalization, city-regions are becoming increasingly central to modern economic and social life. In a parallel set of developments, many global city-regions and the territories that surround them are beginning to consolidate politically in response to the search by counties, metropolitan areas, municipalities, etc. for region-wide coalitions as a means of dealing with the threats and the opportunities of globalization. In this process, we argue, global city-regions have emerged of late years as a new and critically important kind of geographic phenomenon on the world stage. " http://www.sppsr.ucla.edu/globalcityregions/Abstracts/abstracts.html
Important
policy questions addressed at the conference
"The rise and development of global city-regions present policy makers
and scholars with fundamental challenges that must be addressed simultaneously
on multiple levels -- local, regional, national, and international. Some
of the chief policy questions the Global City-Regions Conference will
address are:
In what ways are global city-regions' capabilities to generate wealth enhanced or threatened by international flows of capital, people, goods and information?
What policy strategies can be devised to create and sustain local competitive advantages and to ensure economic growth, while bringing wasteful inter-regional competition for mobile investments under control?
How can social well-being and environmental quality be secured in global city-regions when these often seem to be endangered by increasing urbanization and globalization?
How do we plan for the public interest in multicultural cities with multiple publics? What alternative institutional arrangements need to be developed to deal with strategic region-wide policy issues and to ensure effective governance of inter-regional relations in the emerging new world order? Can global city-regions be the architects of their own future?" http://www.sppsr.ucla.edu/globalcityregions/Overview/topics.html
Soja, E. W. (1987). Economic restructuring and the internationalization of the Los Angeles region. The Capitalist city: global restructuring and community politics. M. P. Smith and J. R. Feagin. New York, NY, B. Blackwell: 178-197. (ppt file)
a. Three pairs of relationships
Soja spells out three paired relationships which together depict the underlying and often contradictory dynamic of contemporary urban and regional restructuring. These include:
i. deindustrialization and reindustrialization
deindustrialization: disinvestment in and closure of U.S. based auto industry and auto related industry (tires, glass, steel)
reindustrialization: esp. in 2 segments--(a) high tech; (b) garment industry
ii. geographic decentralization and recentralization
decentralization: Historical view (19th century, Post-War). The contemporary period--"the great non-metropolitan turn around"; global in scope.
recentralization (a) downtown "renaissance," (b) world cities, (c) new territorial production complexes.
iii. the peripheralization of labor and the internationalization of capital
*inflow of immigrant labor; *inflow of capital
*important terms:
Internationalization refers to (a) the interconnected and global scale of events (e.g., the world system, the organization of an international division of labor); and (b) the ways in which these interconnections/events affect social and economic restructuring at local, regional and global scales.
Restructuring: (a) conveys a break in secular trends and a shift towards a significantly different order and configuration of social, economic and political life;
(b) rooted in crisis and a competitive conflict between an "inherited" and a "projected" order.
DRAFT EVALUATION OF GROWTH SLOWING POLICIES FOR THE SAN DIEGO REGION April 17, 2001 401 B Street, Suite 800 San Diego, CA 92101 (619) 595-5300 http://www.sandag.cog.ca.us/whats_new/#pubs
DEFINING THE REGION It is useful to clarify the term region when discussing the impacts of policies designed to slow population growth. There are two ways to view the San Diego region. The first is the political boundary that surrounds all 18 cities and the county government. This regional boundary is the functional, regional planning unit over which local jurisdictions collaboratively have authority. From this restricted perspective, as long as growth slows within the regional political boundary, policies will be seen as effective. Another view places the San Diego region in the broader context of our neighbors to the north, south and east. Residents of these areas interact with the San Diego region on a daily basis. Increasing economic and social interaction between the region and its neighbors broadens the geographic definition of our region. In this view, policies that reduce population in the San Diego region while increasing population growth in nearby communities like Tijuana or Temecula are not successful at stopping population growth. Pushing growth to surrounding areas does not remove the negative impacts associated with additional population. People commute here to work, and still use our roads, water and other infrastructure might not be paying as much for it because they often shop outside of our political boundary and pay property taxes in other jurisdictions. For the purposes of this study, the San Diego region is defined as the regional, political boundary that encompasses the 18 cities and the County. However, while discussing the impacts of growth slowing policies, we make reference to the greater region shared between the San Diego region and its neighbors. It is impossible to discuss the impacts of policies locally without accounting for responses in other areas.
Yin, Y. and M. Wang (2000). China's urban environmental sustainability in a global context. Consuming cities: the urban environment in the global economy after the Rio Declaration. N. Low, B. Gleeson, I. Elander and R. Lidskog. New York, Routledge: 153-172.
What do the authors say about urbanization and rising levels of consumption in China? What does this mean (I = P x A x T) ?
China's Clash of cultures: Auto meets the bicycle/
Movie clips shown in class:
Bicycles on the street in Shanghai, China
bike_shanghai1.mov
Bicycles on the street in Shanghai, China
bike_shanghai5.mov
Bicycles on the street in Shanghai, China
bike_shanghai2.mov
Bicycles on the street in Shanghai, China
bike_shanghai3.mov
Bicycles on the street in Shanghai, China
bike_shanghai4.mov
Shanghai,
China 2001
Scale model of the city of Shanghai, downtown district, Municipal_Museum.mov
China pictures: Shanghai
/ New Towns /
Food
From the UN-Habitat 2006 book: China's rising cities, pdf